


all the loose ends would surround me again in the shape of your face

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Light Biblical Imagery, M/M, Missing Scene/Canon Divergence, Pining, Post-MAG159 and Pre-MAG160, Semi-established relationship, The Usual Trauma, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: “Just a trim?” Martin asks, hovering uncertainly by the hearth. He’d just finished chopping wood—no sense walking to town for kindling when Daisy kept a stack of perfectly good logs in the shed—and was in the process of feeding some into the flames. Jon likes to watch the fire, especially during a drought of statements like the one they’re in now. Basira hasn’t sent any in a week or so, and they’re both trying studiously not to worry about it. It seems to take him away, the dancing of the flames, the soft glow of the coals. And, well. Martin prefers Jon right here. But if it eases his mind, going away, there’s nothing Martin would ever do to stop him.Jon tugs idly at a strand curling by his ear. “Yes. Ought to be, anyway. Just enough that it’s manageable again.” Which is fair, because it really hasn’t been for the last few weeks. He showers at night, and his hair is damp well into morning, spectacularly knotted and mussed by sleep. Martin’s certainly woken up with wet curls of it caught up in his mouth, and while there are worse things in the world than waking up with his face pressed into Jon’s hair, arms wrapped solidly around his waist, he’s not quite so fond of the taste of conditioner.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 38
Kudos: 239





	all the loose ends would surround me again in the shape of your face

**Author's Note:**

> i genuinely don't know how to categorize this and i think it shows lol. at any rate, the title is from "sim sala bim" by the fleet foxes, which is a beautiful song whose lyrics actually make sense for this fic (only when taken at face value, but that's good enough for me)! hope you enjoy :)

Five days before the end of the world, Jon asks Martin to cut his hair for him. 

It’s reasonable enough. Jon’s not the best when it comes to self-care, it doesn’t take a particularly high level of observation to notice that, so his hair, now down almost to his midback, is getting increasingly tangled, increasingly in his eyes, and increasingly split at the ends. Even more reasonable to assume that he wouldn’t be particularly skilled in the way of cutting it himself. 

Still, Martin hesitates at the request. It’s in his nature. 

“Just a trim?” he asks, hovering uncertainly by the hearth. He’d just finished chopping wood—no sense walking to town for kindling when Daisy kept a stack of perfectly good logs in the shed—and was feeding some into the flames. Jon likes to watch the fire, especially during a drought of statements like the one they’re in now. Basira hasn’t sent any in a week or so, and they’re both trying studiously not to worry about it. It seems to take him away, the dancing of the flames, the soft glow of the coals. And, well. Martin prefers Jon right here. But if it eases his mind, there’s nothing Martin would ever do to stop him. 

Jon tugs idly at a strand curling by his ear. “Yes. Ought to be, anyway. Just enough that it’s manageable again.” Which is fair, because it really hasn’t been for the last few weeks. He showers at night, and his hair is damp well into morning, spectacularly knotted and mussed by sleep. Martin’s certainly woken up with wet curls of it caught up in his mouth, and while there are worse things in the world than waking up with his face pressed into Jon’s hair, arms wrapped solidly around his waist, he’s not quite so fond of the taste of conditioner. 

“Right, then,” Martin says, and brushes any grime from the fire off onto his jeans. “Do you have scissors?” 

He smiles wryly. “I’m sure Daisy’s got them around.” 

He’s right, of course. And really, considering Daisy, it’s perfectly likely that he had a lucky guess rather than knew—they’re lying behind the first aid kit in the second-to-last drawer under the bathroom sink, wickedly sharp and shining faintly in the dim evening light coming in from the window. It’s storming outside, but not in a way that might feel threatening. Just a quiet reminder that the world is spinning on around them. 

Jon picks up the scissors gently, as if they might come to life in his hands and start cutting away at his flesh. They don’t, obviously, but Martin had tensed up with exactly the same worry, so he doesn’t point it out. 

He’s silent for a moment, seemingly inspecting the silvery, unstained metal, so Martin prompts, “In the kitchen, maybe, so you can sit down comfortably.” 

Jon startles, but only a little bit, and nods firmly. “Yes, that’s—that’s good,” he replies, frowning down at the blades, and wanders off toward the kitchen/dining room/living room. It’s all much the same in this tiny cottage, chosen to house one angry woman for a week at most. Strangely, though, it doesn’t feel cramped with Jon, even after two weeks. Not really. The adjustment period had been—relatively short, really, considering he’d spent months on end in almost absolute solitude. But he’d taken to it so easily, moulding his routine around Jon’s, inhabiting the same space as him. There had been such a long time where the archives, with all its nooks and crannies and open plan office space, felt far too small a place to live his life. But this little house, tucked away in the middle of nowhere, feels just about right.

Martin watches him go and glances at the mirror. It’s not something he makes a habit of doing much these days. Spent enough time in front of it as a young man scrutinizing himself, anyway. His hair’s gone shaggy like Jon’s, too; he hasn’t had much incentive to trim it, and it’s started to curl around his ears, slowly returning from the severe cut mandated by Peter. He’d almost gotten used to it, and now the feeling of hair tickling the back of his neck when he moves his head is foreign and almost startling. The reflection in the mirror looks—like a version of him he’s never seen before, before the Institute or after, before the archives or after, before The Lonely or after. Hair just long enough to curl, but a hard, determined set to the mouth that hasn’t quite gone away. Round face, but streaks of premature gray at the temples. Cheeks that still blush too quickly when he talks or even thinks about Jonathan Sims, but worry lines forming on his forehead after all he's seen these last few years. He shakes himself, throwing a disgruntled look at the mirror, and trails after Jon. 

The man in question has pulled out a chair from the table to sit in front of the window. “So I can see my reflection,” he explains, setting the scissors down on the table and sitting down with an odd, refined grace. Martin almost has to laugh at the delicate elegance such a simple motion holds when Jon does it, the precise folding of limbs and sinew. 

“Don’t you trust me to do a good job?” Martin asks, performatively standoffish, and Jon rolls his eyes at him. 

“Nothing wrong with being careful,” he sniffs primly, folding his hands in his lap and expectantly tipping his head back. They haven’t bothered turning on the light in the kitchen, but Jon’s dark hair catches the stormy glow from outside nonetheless, making his hair shine a warm silver. He looks inordinately peaceful, eyes half-closed, and Martin wishes there was some way to freeze that in his mind, that trust and quiet beauty. So rare, but becoming more and more common by the day, and isn’t that in itself a miracle?

Jon twists his neck to look at him properly. “Well?” he asks sharply, but there’s no real edge to it, hasn’t been in ages now. It’s rather like befriending a particularly stubborn stray cat—they never want you to forget there was a time that they’d scratch your face off, even when the only thing they’ve done for weeks is curl up in your lap and purr. 

“Sorry,” Martin says, picking up the scissors, feeling the weight of them in his hands. “Just wanted to make sure I was _being careful.”_

Jon huffs and turns back to watching his reflection, but doesn’t offer any retort. Martin shakes his head fondly and traces his fingertips over Jon’s hair, careful not to snag any of the tangles. He’s got thick hair, wavy to the point of bordering on curly, which is part of the problem—the man’s got decidedly difficult-to-manage hair and has, in a general sense, historically displayed the worst managing skills Martin’s ever seen. 

“How short did you want it?” 

He hums thoughtfully, tips his head. “I was thinking a bit above shoulder-length. Just long enough to put up, but short enough to not get in my way too much.” 

Martin nods, takes a moment to picture what he’s going for there. It doesn’t take much effort; it’s easily Martin’s favorite length that Jon’s hair has ever been, the style of choice back in the days before everything went completely to hell with the Unknowing. He’d imagined—well, it doesn’t matter what he’d imagined. He blushes furiously when he catches Jon’s eye in the reflection and stares down resolutely at the tangles of hair in his hand. Begins combing the ends with his fingers, stalling, until Jon shifts under his fingers impatiently, though he says nothing. Inhales. Exhales. Starts to cut. 

(Flashes of a dream from over a year ago: a hazy, orange-lit room that could ostensibly be the archives at night. Warmth that starts in the skin and travels inwards, low and intense, until it hits the bones white-hot and shuddering. His back against a wall, hard metal shelves pressing at his spine. His hands, tangled up in dark hair shot through with early silver. The rasp of breath, scraping sharp against his throat with each inhale. And Jon— _Jon—)_

A quiet hiss of pain from beneath his hands; he’s accidentally tugged at a snag too hard in his efforts to untangle the ends of the hair. “Sorrysorrysorry,” Martin rushes out, stomach leaping, but Jon just makes a noise somewhere in between irritated and dismissive and straightens again, expectant.

“S’alright, go on.” So he does.

There’s a pile of clippings accumulating at Martin’s feet. The sky is darkening outside, more than before, but he doesn’t feel any urge to turn a lamp on. It would feel too bright. Anyway, he likes it like this, the feeling of cool skin beneath his fingertips in dusky light, the susurration of Jon’s breath a lulling rhythm like the far-off crash of waves. He doesn’t want to leave this liminal space where Jon’s face is gentle and soft, and his eyes are half-closed, and his head is tipped up as if listening to music just out of Martin’s earshot. 

It’s not long before he reaches the end. The job isn’t necessarily the best—he’s been cutting his own hair since he was about fifteen, but his hair has never been this long, and it was always curly enough that he could get away with an uneven cut—but it’s not the worst, either, and it hardly took more than a few minutes. Carefully, Martin sets the shears back down on the table; Jon’s eyes are still hovering between open and shut, and the rain is still tapping out its unsteady rhythm on the roof, and Martin doesn’t want to break whatever spell has been cast on this moment. One of his hands is still in Jon’s hair, not stroking it, just resting there, fingers wound and curled into the ends. 

(Another dream, slower-moving this time: Morning in somebody’s apartment. Impressions of getting ready—brushing teeth, splashing water onto his face. Jon, at the dining room table, eating an orange. Hands outstretched, offering him a section. A kiss that tastes like citrus, a hand reached up to brush a strand of hair out of the way. He had woken up almost ready to scream from how much he wanted it. Wanted _anything.)_

 _Things are better now,_ he reminds himself, and he doesn’t flex his fingers, just holds still and lifts his eyes to the window, where Jon is already looking back at him in the glass, eyes no longer unfocused. As always, his gaze is heavy with something Martin has never been able to identify for all the time he has spent looking back, something intense and burning and rich like honey, charcoal-dark and just out of his reach. He wants to kiss him, and he has for as long as he’s known him. But it’s more, now, and he can’t even pinpoint when it happened. Where did it stop just being about kissing or sex or even love? Where did he start wanting to break him open and crawl inside, touch every part of him, down to the marrow and past it? He wants Jon’s humanity and his inhumanity, too. He wants his missing ribs. He wants his slow mornings and desperate nights, wants his endless landscape of nightmares, wants him drunk and sober and furious and euphoric and nervously sneaking cigarettes, wants him knowing too much, wants him stumbling coltish through conversations with the locals, wants him blushing shyly and hiding his face, wants him weak for him and whispering confessions in his ear, wants him strung out and exhausted and searching for anything that will carry him through to tomorrow, wants him eyes closed and eyes open and eyes watching, unblinking and beyond his understanding.

In the window, Jon looks away and inhales a sharp breath, and just like that, the spell is broken. 

A careful inspection of the new haircut, then, head turning this way and that. “It’s good, Martin,” he murmurs, subdued and awkward as ever, and Martin reminds himself that it’s just _Jon,_ that it’s okay. 

“Good,” Martin says, and disentangles his fingers as quickly and subtly as he can, though he doubts it's possible for it to have gone unnoticed. “I’m glad.”

He doesn’t think Jon would be mad at him, it’s just that they don’t—they just _don’t_ . They sleep in the same bed and make each other meals and spend hours talking every day and hold each other close every night and walk through the highlands in companionable silence and watch sunsets and drink red wine together. And Martin hasn’t kissed him, hasn’t held him in the light of day. Hasn’t put his hands so deliberately in Jon’s hair just because he _can_. Hasn’t told him he loves him. 

(Just that single, ugly past tense, _loved_ , fog-choked and barely-there.) 

Jon runs searching hands through his hair, giving a quiet _hm_ when he reaches the end before turning his head to look at Martin again beseechingly. “I might, uh. I might actually want it shorter. If it’s not too much trouble?”

Something about the way he says it feels wrong, but Martin resists the urge to touch again, explore it himself. “Could I ask why?” He keeps his voice deliberately neutral and is glad he did when Jon’s lips flatten into a thin line. 

“You could.” His tone betrays nothing, and that in itself is an answer. 

“I’ll do it if you want; it really is fine if you’d rather not say why, but,” and there’s nothing for it, he’s touching Jon again, this time just where the shoulder meets the neck, and he’s _sure_ he imagines the slight intake of breath. He has to have imagined it.

Jon makes a dissatisfied noise and rests his chin against the top of the chair. “Wish you could compel it out of me,” he grumbles. “Might make it easier.” 

Martin hums noncommittally but doesn’t answer other than that, just moves his thumb slowly over the tense muscle of Jon’s shoulder, barely even pressing down, and the other man sighs, slumps in his seat. 

“Fine.” Somewhere, a tape recorder may be whirring, but neither can find it within themselves to care. “I just—I got tired of being kidnapped, somewhere down the line. When I got taken by The Stranger, they—they grabbed me by my hair when I tried to run, pulled me back. It hurt, and it was humiliating, and I’m so—” He laughs, a bitter, broken sound. “I’m so tired of getting hurt, Martin. And any way that I can make it harder for them to do that to me—” 

“Do you like how it feels?” 

Jon just looks at him, confusion obvious in every line of his face. “How it…” He trails off, brow furrowed. 

“How it feels. To have hair at this length.” He wonders if Jon is consciously tipping his face into Martin’s hand as he regards him, those dark, wide eyes searching for—what? 

“I guess it’s… good.” A statement, but his voice inflects a little as if it’s a question, like he has to check. He reaches a hand up, seemingly unconsciously, to brush a hand through his hair, now falling in gentle waves around his face to his neck. 

Martin nods. “I think so too. Isn’t that enough?” Jon doesn’t interrupt him, so he presses on. “I mean—isn’t it enough just to like it? Just to think it looks good and feels good? It’s not—we can’t stop this life we chose from doing what it wants to do to us. We’re always going to be scared, I think. So can’t we just be happy, too?” 

Silence, for a long moment, broken only by the murmur of the rain outside. He lets out a trembling sigh, drops his head against Martin’s forearm. “Okay.” 

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah.” And he leans forward, rests his head against Jon’s. There’s nothing left that he can do.

(A dream, just a few nights ago: Standing alone on a beach. Nobody is anywhere. The mist rolls in, and it doesn’t roll back out. 

Awake, just a few nights ago: His heartbeat is fast but beginning to return to its normal rhythm. He is holding Jon against his chest, fingers spread wide over the flat planes of his back so close that he can feel the missing spaces where ribs should be protecting his heart and lungs. Jon stirs against him; he can feel the puff of air in the hollow of his throat. This life they have together, it’s not quite what he wants, and he’s not sure it’s quite what Jon wants either, but it’s close enough, God, it _has_ to be close enough. _Until death do us part. Until after that, too, because I don’t know if this world will let us die._ The wind moves the branches of the trees outside, casting shadows on the bedroom wall. He watches them shift, and he feels the slow expansion and contraction of breath against his body, and he surrenders to sleep again.) 

“We’re safe,” Jon murmurs, lips moving minutely against the skin of Martin’s wrist, and, just for a little while, he can believe him. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i'm [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to check out any of my stuff there. comments mean a lot to me if you feel inclined to leave one, and of course thanks again <3


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